It's remarkable to imagine how different the world might have been if the Tiananmen uprising had succeeded. Democracy with Chinese characteristics, or whatever. A true ideological and moral competitor to the West.
As China becomes wealthier, sustained growth will become more challenging. The low-hanging fruit of state-directed investments like infrastructure and manufacturing will have been plucked, and the country will need private capital and human capital formation for continued growth. Private capital and human capital have a tendency to migrate to the most hospitable locations, which are modern democratic nations -- places with independent courts that respect human rights and property rights; with independent media that allow the free discussion of interests, events, ethics, and information; and with governments that are responsive and accountable to the population's interests through elections. If China is seriously committed to growth (which appears to be the case), they will necessarily become more democratic.
So why do I think the transformation will happen within a decade? Not many authoritarian nations exceed their current GDP/capita (except for oil rich nations), so the transformation will need to happen soon to maintain growth.
I also wish for a more liberal China, I am just trying to explore some of the complexities of such events. To be fair, if by "if the Tiananmen uprising had succeeded", you mean "if the Tiananmen uprising had made China democratic", then some of my points do not make sense. It is just that, based on my reading about history, I know that successful revolutions often lead to outcomes that are very different from what idealists who root for those revolutions have in mind.
But I think it is fair to take the student's and those they were inspired by at their word and theorize that China might have been 'more democratic' had the movement been embraced.
But we'll never know for sure.
You may want to re-read the article. There's at least one passage of a group of the protestors approaching a surrendering soldier with pipes, rocks, and other weapons. The reporter continues, "surely the man would be killed. There was nothing I could do to help him in the chaos."
Perhaps the argument here is that the guy got what he deserved, but I think if you want to argue that it's okay to kill someone who's surrendering, you might be fairly classified as militant.
Even the first, democratic-inspired revolution can look pretty dangerous in retrospect. I am sympathetic to many ideals of May ’68, yet at the same time I feel like Western Europe dodged a bullet, because the subsequent regime could have turned out very badly.
A better question might be; will China ever have self determination? Or will it always be a self selected leader with a “5 year plan”
I don't think that this is an accurate description of the process for selecting the PRC's General Secretary.
If our morals are competing, I take that as we are trying to win in the domain of morality, not that the domain of morality is a piece of the competition in the domain of global mind share
These models reflect moral as well as political beliefs. The models are also not compatible - meaning we can't be both and the more of one the less there is of the other. This is the sense in which we have conflicting views and are striving against one another to promote our ideology.
Haven't the 'best morals' always have been those with the most mindshare ?
If their morals were popular that wouldn't have to constantly lie about them.
Praise China!
For me it is not separable from their pasts because those nations would not have stability or the flexibility to make moral choices if they didnt successfully do immoral things to people they didnt like until they were either eradicated or everyone else finally got the memo to leave.
Although it is uncomfortable to be aware of and powerless, there just isn’t a history of intervention to think there will be one with China, or more accurately there isnt a history to suggest that this particular problem wont solve itself.
Secondly, I have to disagree that present day Europe benefits from past imperialism. Pre-imperialist UK and France were doing just fine. In fact, they were doing so well, they decided they could be doing even better by going out and taking over more of the world. It doesn't make sense to me to attribute their modern day successes to their imperialist past. Imperialism isn't on the table unless you're already doing great relative to the rest of the world. I think the US is a perfect example of that actually. We were arguably at our peak globally well before we began military interventions elsewhere in the world.
I think we have to judge a thing on its actions, or the arguments get rather circular.
Isn't that just Taiwan?
Or taking over their smaller neighbors like, Tibet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_Peo...
Or crushing political descent in Hong Kong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_misconduct_allegations_...
A China not trying to push their boarder with India, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_border_dispute#Bou...
or indulging and supporting the sociopathic regime in North Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93North_Korea_rela...
A China that that doesn't disappear a religious leader of one of the worlds largest religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Panchen_Lama_controversy
and force the another to live in exile and demand that said religions leader reincarnation be aproved by the Chinese communist party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Dalai_Lama#Exile_to_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_the_14th_Dalai_L...
Or participating in a mass genocide of their people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
Imagine a china the wasn't evil but tolerated because corperations can there outsource for cheaper manufacturing
We don't have a good model for predicting the outcomes of revolutions ex ante. But if we're calling to the stage Russia and the Arab Spring, we should also make honorary mention of the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Japan and India.
It could actually be argued that India has no business being a one country, should have been a union of countries a la the EU.
The two party system creates an us vs them mentality where both are equally bad on most things but there is no real choice for the voters.
It’s the least bad system we have.
Perhaps it's the cleverest (in the negative connotation), most sociopathic, and those who've inherited it who are the oligarchs.
Yeah, they might have brought Larry Summers and friends in as well, and had their economy devastated as well.
There’s a great book called “When the World Seemed New,” by Jeffrey Engel about the monumental world events which during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.
Tiananmen Square took place ~5 months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. One of the points made in the book (and other Cold War-related texts I have read, though pointedly in this one) suggested the events in China really gave the (East) Germans and Soviets pause on how to handle a rising protest movement. It’s still regarded as a bit of a miracle the Leipzig church demonstrations and the Wall falling occurred without bloodshed.
Would a peaceful resolution in China have changed the ultimate course of the Cold War? I don’t necessarily think so; Iron Curtain nations were already fraying. But it would have been very, very interesting if two major communist countries, nuclear powers fell in quick order in terms of economies and alliances.
The winning regime wanted to move away from many marxist ideas, and they did, with liberalization of the markets and private ownership. Although they retain the name “Communist Party” and they teach and exalt marxist ideals in their schools, they just teach that whatever the communist party is currently doing is marxist.
The protestors in 1989 saw and predicted this lack of accountability and wanted to move towards the promised land of communism that no country has ever done, the promise which keeps enamoring new young people in every generation.
The state said no and had also concluded those ideals don't make sense, and moved towards state capitalism which has been extremely successful with unprecedented growth for any country, but doubly true for one with such a large population.
We would likely have worse relations with a democratic actually communist china.
None of these are democracies, just greater pursuit of communism which is what the protestors wanted
Also says some pretty terrible things about capitalism that it needs to be defended by crushing protests with tanks. And this is supposed to be an argument in its favor?
I said it would be bad for US, which was the only opinion added to the post. There are no arguments for anything as I only wrote about the accuracy of what occurred. Maybe somebody else will entertain the conversation you want to have though.